Buchanan Is Not The Right Answer

COMMENTARY

March 15, 1992|By JOAN BECK, Tribune Media Services

What have so many voters been trying to say by casting primary ballots for Pat Buchanan?

Conventional Wisdom says they`re sending a wake-up, shape-up call to George Bush to get moving on domestic problems, to end the recession, put the country back to work, to show some vision and leadership.

Some Buchanan supporters are giving voice to bigotry and unrepentant racism, raising an objection to a tide of immigration, hoping to curb welfare spending and liberal loonies. But votes for Buchanan may not all be for his back-to-the-1930s America-firstism, his isolationism and his emphasis on Euro- Americanism. Some part of it may also be an understandable yearning for the simpler value systems and less threatening society that exist somewhere in our collective nostalgia.

The undercurrent of discontent goes beyond the urgent economic issues that the candidates attack with such vigor. It comes also from serious anxieties about disintegrating and stressed-out families, unsafe neighborhoods, inability to protect children from drugs and crime, disappearing moral values, loss of social support systems and the cultural shocks of rapid and uncomfortable change.

Much of the uneasiness and queasiness about the nation`s well-being is inchoate and incoherent. Some of the concerns are not the business of government or within its power to change. What`s missing may not be so much a candidate with an economic plan or a national health care proposal or a legislative agenda as one with the moral vision and the courage to lead the way to some reassuring national values.

An NBC exit poll on Super Tuesday showed that 40 percent of Democrats wished they had had someone other than the candidates on the ballot to vote for. Some of Buchanan`s vote -- on the average, about 30 percent of Republican ballots so far -- could just as easily have gone to ``uncommitted`` or ``none of the above.``

Where are the candidates speaking out on arms control in American cities? Who knows how to reclaim city parks for peaceful public use, to reduce the realistic fears of crime and violence that lock so many of us in behind barred doors?

Too many candidates shy away from even talking about such issues lest their speeches be perceived as code words for bigotry and racism.

Millions of voters are deeply worried about family issues: problems of single-parent homes, fatherless children, broken marriages, teen-age pregnancy, child abuse and neglect, just the everyday grind of working parents anxious about not having enough time for their children.

Who can rally Americans to demand and get a voluntary scaling-back of violence on TV and other media to reduce the polluting of children`s minds?

Which candidate has a plan for getting illegal drugs out of our neighborhoods and our children`s lives? Who will do more than fly off to international meetings, pose for photo opportunities and promise tougher prison sentences? Who knows a way to protect babies from being born already brain-damaged by alcohol or drugs?

How do we go about building a culturally diverse, equitable nation with enough shared values to encompass us all -- unless we can put in office a president with the vision and courage and ability to lead the way? How do we move away from the petty nitpicking of political correctness to genuine moral values powerful enough to be a frame of reference for behavior?

Some voters concerned about the deteriorating quality of life in the United States may think they see some answers in the punditry and conservative convictions of Buchanan. They are right about their concerns. But he is not the right answer.